Last week, I found myself leaving behind my cell phone, watch, and carrying only my ID into the Indiana Women’s Prison. I was there with a work colleague to help him conduct a class on budgeting and financial literacy. While I’m not a pro at any of those two things, he admitted he brought me along for my personality. I’m fine with that.

The prison sits on a large campus. It is surprisingly lush and offers a few benches and a ton of walking space. Onsite is, of course, the prison, but also an old building that was previously a juvenile correctional facility that functioned as a middle school, and a lovely cathedral. My colleague and I could be found in the school building with a cohort of women and two facilitators from Marian University. The classroom was clearly an old Chemistry class with the lab tables were you could imagine beakers once sat waiting for an experiment.

Over the next hour, we were in deep conversations about finances and all the nuanced phobias that come with it. More importantly, though, I learned names, facts about their lives, their prison sentences, and what each enjoy. One woman raved how much she loved learning, and now considers herself a life long learner. Hoping that upon her release, she can spend her days in school.

As we talked finance, I learned each woman is allotted $35-$40 per month as pay for the work they conduct while incarcerated. Someone spoke on how they budget for their coffee. One woman spoke about her upcoming release and the money fears that surrounded it. She mentioned how she once lived a life where taking her kids to Disney World was the norm, but then she stupidly decided to sell drugs. I am meeting her at this moment where financial life will be drastically different, though, she will be home again. As I stood in that classroom, watching, listening, and participating with them in talking about money and life, what stood out to me was this:

When all else is equal — resources, no expectation other than the now, no distractions from the outside world — I could have been dropped into that room and would have never guessed these women were serving prison sentences. A few are about to graduate with their Associates degree. Others talked about how much they’re learning about themselves. And the Marian professor who walked me back to the front explained how this is his favorite thing to do.

He talked with passion about how the women there are eager to learn. Some never had the opportunity to do so before, so they take it seriously. He could not say the same about his university students who show up missing homework and distracted with a lackluster desire to learn.

In a day and age where it feels like we are living in some simulated, overstimulated experience, being told what to think and feel, watching people thrive educationally — in circumstances no one would ever hope to find themselves in, no less — was a testament to how necessary it is to log off, touch literal grass, and enjoy learning something new.

For me, this looks like printing off Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s take on stupidity and reading slowly over a solo meal.

Be well, friends.